Found a Demon In My Safest Haven
by with-etoiles
Summary: "I don't want Sue to touch Blaine; I've made it hard enough already for him and I call myself his friend." Established Blaine Santana friendship.  Written while 3x01 aired, no canon events before that included in the fic.


_Found a Demon in My Safest Haven_

"Sa- San?" Blaine peered cautiously around a corner, finding a dejected Santana and an empty box of Kleenex at her fingertips. The empty classroom she was in was too cheery for the picture of plain despair she was projecting of herself.

"Get out of here you man slut, I don't need this right now."

"Hold up, Santana. Why are you so angry? Did I do something?"

She turned around, a voracious look on her face and an accusatory frown on her lips. "You know exactly what you did."

He thought for a second. "Are you insinuating that's it my fault that you were kicked out of Glee Club?"

"Yes you stupid, filthy little traitor?" It was meant to be on of Santana's patented cutting insults, ones that were infamous for cutting to the bone. Yet, she never got to it, and instead finished lamely with a quasi-question of an affront.

"Um, I'm sorry, what? I don't understand."

"If you would've never put on that performance to get your traitor little ass into McKinley's social martyrdom of a glee club, I would still be in that pathetic choir room and hating every second of it."

"Santana-"

"Blaine, like I said, not now, ok?" She broke down, a blood red fingernail halting Blaine's continuing attempts at comfort. "We can't be all bestie-bestie, alright? That doesn't happen at McKinley. That doesn't happen in the world. I'm just alone and that's all I'll ever be."

"Yeah, you are."

Santana stopped sniffling enough to punch him in the arm. "I hate you."

"Love you too, Sannie."

She offered him a weak smile, evidently having recovered enough to give a concerted effort to pay attention to Blaine.

"I know you don't like it when people go all pity pity on you, so I won't. But look, I have issues too! Transferring to McKinley is not the easiest thing for me."

"Oh, let's all throw a pity party for sweet, innocent Blainers. Let's all dance and sing around a bonfire and sing Kumbayah, why don't we?"

"Fine, let's talk about _your_ problems then," he answered with a sly smile.

Suddenly she became quiet. "Kumbayah is suddenly becoming the catchiest song in the world."

"See! Stop doing this to yourself Santana. I know how you like to consider yourself to act, and you love that fact, but you need to make a choice sometime. You like playing both sides, but honestly, it's not working out so well for you, is it?"

"I'm glad you think so high of me."

He quickly backtracked, "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that was your label of choice since you consistently refer to yourself as-"

"Idiot."

It took him a few beats, but soon he smiled, ducking his head.

She spat out a hard laugh and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "-but I love you."

"If you love me enough, _please_ explain something to me."

She bit her lip. "Don't push the limit," she warned with a distinct immaturity in her voice.

"I'm not asking for you to flesh out your darkest secrets, but- did you really set fire to the piano on purpose?"

"No." There was a deep trembling in her voice that she desperately hoped Blaine did not notice.

"Santana, please don't lie to me."

"I said no, Blaine, what else could you-"

But the look he gave her put her resolve on halt.

"Yes."

He sighed dejectedly. "As if I expected anything else from you," he teased pulling her springy ponytail. There was still too much grief in his eyes for Santana to let that comment go, though.

"Does that _upset_ you?"

"Hmm?" Blaine had mysteriously found a way to look directly at Santana yet shift his eyes down simultaneously. Now he lifted them up, a firm mask in place.

"Does that upset you?"

"Well," he started, not sure whether to tell her the truth or not. "Um, er, kind of."

"How can it- how can you- how can you care?"

That was about the last question Blaine had expected from Santana.

"What? How could I care? How could I not care?" Fury was compounding within him, a rising insolence influenced his mouth.

"You betrayed _me_, Santana. I don't understand, sincerely, I don't. I thought that you were my friend, and more than that I thought that maybe we had something stronger than mere acquaintance. I thought that whatever we had was enough to overcome your manipulative ways, but I guess not. I thought that I meant something to you. How could you exploit me like that?"

Santana was stunned. She wasn't used to people, uh, _caring_ for her. "But I was forced to by Coach Sylvester."

"BS, Santana."

"It is not!" She exclaimed defensively, sounding so much like a child that she wanted to drill her mouth shut and never allow herself to speak again.

"It is, and we both know it," he cut in harshly.

"But-" she tried to formulate a witty response, an acerbic comeback, but she couldn't.

"No, forget it. It's alright. I half expected it anyways." He really hated the way the emotion boiled through his veins and forced him out the door, but that they did, a firm echo of a slammed door behind him.

* * *

><p>The next day, Santana had all but gotten over that stupid little fight her and Blaine had had. She was ready to forgive him and resume their bizarre acquaintance slash friendship slash gay confidant thing they had going on. Yet, Coach Sylvester stopped her in the hallway before she could reach Blaine.<p>

Over Sue's shoulder, he could see Blaine making sickly loving eyes at Kurt as he did some insignificant thing like check himself in the mirror.

"Santana, I have another task for you," Sue sneered, snapping Santana's focus back to her hard eyes.

As it became evident that Santana would not be responding, Sue tried again. "Bags for boobs, Mexicorn (you're obnoxious and expire entirely too early)-" She still wasn't returning spiteful banter.

"Lesbo, this is important business that must be accomplished immediately."

At that Santana refocused on Sue.

"¿Per_don_? "

"I know all about your dirty little secret." Sue was infuriatingly calm in her delivery of this one sentence that would absolutely tear Santana's life to shreds.

Her lips fell open imperceptibly; she automatically resumed a stance of denial.

"You don't know anything about me, Coach Sylvester! Team Sue my ass; you are no one to be working for!"

Sue smiled mischeviously. "Ah, but you have to. Because if you _don't_, a security video of the school's of you singing sweet, sweet _Songbird_ to dip for brains will be published on the internet, and then your social status will be_ ruined_."

Santana's mind was in distress. She had never had to go to such measures to get what she wanted, a cavort of the hips or a caustic remark always put her enemy into place. She couldn't manipulate Sue that way, though; she was already one leg up on that gesture.

"Fine," her voice became as low as a whisper, as quivery as a leaf in the wind. "What do you need?"

Sue smiled again, "I need you to destroy mini Schue over there." She nodded her head towards Blaine, who was pressing a quick kiss to Kurt's forehead.

"Why Blaine?" Santana asked, not sure if she was able to do anything else to Blaine after what Sue had already made her do.

"Because member numero dos of Gelaholics Anonymous over there needs to be taught a lesson."

"I'm still not understanding," Santana queried.

"Did you not notice how his sabotaged performance- good job, by the way- attracted no bouts of violence or mob insurgence against the Glee Club? He could be their ticket to maintaining their pathetic little circle of sing song atrocities!"

Santana was surprised that Sue paid no heed to the fact that Santana had been part of that Glee Club up until yesterday.

"If they succeed, my campaign could go down the drain. We can't let that happen. So now that your allegiance is _confirmed,_" she smirked manipulatively again- how Santana hated that- "I can rest assured in knowing that you will undoubtedly accomplish this task."

She scowled, hating that there was no way she could weasel her pathetic butt out of this one.

Sue noticed. "_Excellent._"

* * *

><p>That little encounter with Sue had put a damper on her plans a bit. Just a little but, you know, she reasoned. She was <em>Santana Lopez, <em>people did not manipulate her, she manipulated _them_. She had gotten herself into this mess anyways; it was up to her to get herself out.

So, it was with this attitude that Santana continued throughout the day, keeping an eye out for Blaine. She was sure that gay Yoda's idealistic mind and her conniving brain could find some way to get out of this. She spotted him on his way to the choir room, an orphaned look on his face.

"Blainers, come give Auntie Tanie some love!" She held her arms open in a crude but inviting fashion.

Normally Blaine would've given an embarrassed smile and returned her hug, but he just rolled his eyes and tried to duck behind a door.

_Wait a hot second._ _Rolled his eyes_? She greeted this thought with a shocked aptitude. Santana did not ever allow anyone to roll their eyes at her, even Blaine.

She ventured behind the door. Blaine's face fell for half a second, before he fixed a very recognizable façade upon his features.

"Hey Santana!"

"Cut the crap, Blainers. What's wrong?"

He shook his head unconvincingly. "Nothing's wrong; why would anything be wrong? I'm at McKinley and with Kurt and I'm in Glee Club and nothing could be better!" He finished even more unconvincingly than he had started, and she noticed his eyelashes flutter faintly and a blurry feeling of sadness evade his expression.

"Listen, I need to talk game plan with you."

"So, are we just disregarding everything that happened yesterday?" He was still shaking slightly and everything about him screamed _unstable_ to Santana.

"Well," she began coyly, "we could talk that out and have it inevitably end in another argument,"

At the word argument Blaine paled.

"Or, we could embrace each other heartily or whatever it's called and put this all behind us."

He moved in uncertainly, wrapping a quick arm around her and then pulling back.

"Good. Now, listen to me, I have some serious business to talk to you about."

He leaned against an adjacent wall and almost knocked down a mop, causing Santana to notice that they were in an abandoned closet. He laughed feebly and straightened the mop, assuming again his learned position and gesturing to Santana to continue.

"I," she couldn't exactly force the words out, because there was just something so wrong about all of this.

"Coach Sylvester-" again, there was the beginnings of a plan on her lips, but instead a rushed sentiment bubbled up.

"Blaine, have you and Kurt fought recently?"

"What? No, what would make you think that?"

"Because, you're shaking like a damn leaf and I'm worried."

He sighed, slumping his back against the wall.

"Yeah, we did."

She immediately softened, remembering how she had felt last year when she and Brittany had fought.

"Why?"

"Uh, I'm not exactly sure. I'm sure that it was neither of our faults anyways, but we ended up getting into a little, uh, _disagreement, _about the song we were going to select for our duet in Glee Club today_._"

He paused, sucked in another deep breath, and continued.

"Point is, I may have upset him by telling him that he wasn't always right, and then he went on to counter that neither was I, and said he had half a mind to agree with Finn about me."

"Wait," Santana cut in, "Finn?"

"Yeah. When I first joined Glee he said something about bells and whistles and ball hogging, but that's not the point."

Santana must've missed that in her anger about being kicked out of Glee Club and subsequently trying to wipe her memory of that very incident.

"Anyways, voices were escalated, declarations were _un_declared, and I don't really know how something that little became_ that._"

"Hold up," Santana said. "What exactly did Hummel say?"

"Well, he said he agreed with Finn about me about… well, you know. I suppose it's true to a sense… all that time with the Warblers and always being the frontman and I guess I just don't really know my place…" he trailed off dejectedly.

Santana was going to make a sly joke, but she decided that that would not exactly be appropriate at this time.

"…I really don't know what I'm doing, really… I don't want to lose him…"

"Listen Blaine," Santana said, moving closer. "Don't listen to Hummel. I know he's your _muse _or whatever, but don't let one little argument get to you. Although the world is a _bitch_ to good people like you and me," Blaine smiled faintly, "I know in the end, if you're haven't gotten yourself killed before your time, it somehow corrects itself. I'm absolutely positive that Kurt didn't mean what he said to you. If those annoying scrunchy smiles around you mean anything, he doesn't mean it."

"Wow Santana," Blaine moved in to envelop her in a hug, "I really love you."

She laughed into the hug. "Don't let this go to your head."

* * *

><p>During her time of expulsion from the Glee Club, Santana figured out a couple of things: 1) Glee Club really was her favorite part of the day and now she was left with even more time to hate the world and 2) Since Blaine's near breakdown, she had more time to observe him and Hummel, and things had not been getting any better. She decided it was nice to have something else to focus her attention on, so she devoted herself to getting them to apologize to one another. She could also accomplish leading Sue on to think she was trying to destroy Blaine by reporting to her just how much less sunshine and rainbows he was recently. All in all, it was a win-win situation for her.<p>

She decided what she needed to do was to get the two of them talking. Blaine was all Mr. Optimist in front of people, but she had a sneaking suspicion that he wasn't nearly so when he was alone or with Kurt; she knew there was some degree of hiding he was doing. He was a bit of a resigned personality when she thought about it; there was no way he'd confront Kurt about their argument after it happened, probably for fear of having him tell him what he dreaded the most: _You're not good enough and I don't forgive you._ She just wished there were some way she could knock some sense into the poor boy's head, that he absolutely was good enough. She had a feeling people didn't tell him that often enough.

It was just her luck that Kurt happened to be by his locker and she was walking through the hallways formulating her plan.

"Hummel! I need to talk to you!"

He turned around with a guarded expression.

"I'm not going to tear you down today, so wipe that far away expression off your face and listen to me."

His face was still shielded, but his eyes portrayed a hint of interest.

"Your boyfriend is in trouble. Coach Sylvester has enlisted me to help destroy him."

His eyes dilated but quickly narrowed to accusatory slits. "And you are telling _me_ this because…?

"Because I don't want to do it! Listen, I may not be the nicest person towards you or anyone else in that stupid Glee Club, but I," she lowered her voice, "I do care. And I don't want Sue to touch Blaine; I've made it hard enough already for him and I call myself his _friend._"

"So you are going to try to willingly make it up to Blaine? And you need my help?"

She nodded. "Coach Sylvester has a weakness, and although she may seem like a horrible person, there's still a little bit of good inside of her. We need to appeal to that."

"I'm listening."

"Come to the choir room this afternoon."

Kurt wasn't quite sure how this would fix anything, but he agreed.

"I'll be there."

* * *

><p>Santana texted Blaine as the last bell of the day rang out.<p>

_Santana_: _Come to the choir room._

_ Blaine: Why?_

_ Santana: Just come, trust me._

_Blaine: Trusting you seems like a dangerous thing._

_Santana: You know it!_

_Blaine: : ) Alright, I'm on my way._

* * *

><p>When Santana walked in, both Kurt and Blaine were staring awkwardly in front of each other, an empty seat between them.<p>

"Alright, what the hell are you two doing?"

"Waiting for you," Blaine answered, still looking down.

"Obvs. But why are you two ignoring each other like I try my hardest to ignore Rachel everytime she opens her large mouth?"

"Why did you want me to come here, Santana?" Kurt asked, a little annoyed.

"Why do you think?"

Kurt looked at Blaine and his mouth fell open a little bit. "Oh."

"Yeah, oh. Now you two hurry up and apologize to one another and get your mack on in an abandoned janitor's closet so I can rest assured knowing that you two are disgustedly in love again."

They still sat there awkwardly.

"I'll leave, I just needed to make sure you would both come. But don't you for a second think about leaving until you make up!" She yelled over her shoulder as she walked out into the hallway. There she met Coach Sylvester.

"Excellent, you came."

"I sure did, Santana. Now, what was it that you wanted me to see?"

"Look in that choir room."

Sue peered in, taking in the sight of Kurt and Blaine awkwardly turning to each other and Blaine started to explain things.

Sue turned back to Santana. "They're fighting."

"Yes, they are. Finn has helped instigate that fight, but they're fighting."

Sue still watched them in the choir room.

"Which means Blaine's spirit is crushed."

Sue still wasn't making any acknowledgement of Blaine's misery, and now Kurt and Blaine were starting to move closer, their hands roaming to hair and faces and lips connecting in a desperate sort of way. Santana had hoped her plan wouldn't have to come to this part, because she didn't know how much she could rely on Sue's inner goodness, but it looked like it was going to have to.

"Look, Coach Sylvester, Kurt and Blaine are practically the only people each other have. You've done such a good job of breaking up Glee, and you know how things were like for Kurt last year-"

"I couldn't help but pity Porcelain just a little bit last year," Sue agreed marginally.

"-and Blaine doesn't have any support system among the Glee Club here either. Finn is so obviously jealous that he rips him a new one every time he tries to speak, and I know for a fact that Blaine has had to go through some serious bullying in his past. They have had enough; they're already broken down."

Sue turned back to Santana, and Santana drew herself up.

"And I don't, "her voice trembled, "_I don't care if you out me or not._ I'm not going to take that away from them."

Santana desperately hoped Sue couldn't see through her bluff, because as much as she wanted to help Blaine she couldn't help but feel tears well up in her eyes when she thought of everyone knowing, of everyone being able to use this as a weapon against her, especially when she's tried so hard to deflect their viciousness away from her and instead reap their praise. They were just stupid homophobes in high school after all; they didn't want to see understanding or compassion, they wanted violence and a verbal bloodbath.

Sue was taken aback a moment; she studied Santana. She tried to hold herself steady against her harsh gaze.

"I've underestimated you," Sue said at last. Then she walked away.

Santana peered back into the choir room. Kurt and Blaine were holding hands and buzzing with chatter. They were staring at each other with a gleaming hope in their eyes that she had admittedly missed between them as she observed them in the hallways. She smiled, content with her work. And even as she walked away, she could still hear their whispered _I'm sorry's_ and _I love you's_ echoing throughout the hallways.

* * *

><p>Santana had never really expected them to do anything for her in return; that wasn't the way the world worked. You rarely did good because it rarely came back to you. Sure, she still believed it did come back to you somehow, but not in any timeframe of convenience or use. She was above the world's vicious cycle of the goods getting the bad and the bads getting the good. She did her own thing and reaped her own benefits in return, no cosmic karma needed.<p>

That's why it surprised her when Blaine and Kurt came up to her the next day, Blaine still beaming like an annoying ray of sunshine and Kurt rolling his eyes but still sneaking adoring glances his way.

"You're allowed back in Glee Club again," Blaine burst out.

Kurt smiled at him. "We were supposed to make her guess that," he reproved a little too nicely.

Blaine piped back up. "We talked to Coach Sylvester after we left the choir room, and oddly enough, she actually sympathized with you. She said she would convince Mr. Schue that it had all been an accident. Quinn didn't mean to throw her cigarette on the piano and those pianos were donated anyways, there were sure to be some liabilities with them, including flammability." Kurt looked at him. "What? It's plausible!"

"What makes you think I want to be back in that Glee Club?"

"_Santana." _Kurt drew out her name.

"Don't deny it," Blaine added.

Her lips opened to deny them, but they were just too damn happy for her to rain on their parade.

She smiled shyly, looking towards the ground. "Thanks guys."

Their faces broke out into huge smiles, Blaine looking at Kurt who was looking back at Blaine and then both were looking at Santana, enveloping her in a bear hug.

"It's the least we could do," Kurt returned.


End file.
